NPR will lay off approximately 10% of its workforce, or around 100 employees, the company announced on Wednesday.
In an internal memo sent to employees and reported by the Washington Post, the NPR chief executive, John Lansing, said the layoffs came largely as a result of declining advertising revenue.
“Our financial outlook has darkened considerably over recent weeks,” he said.
NPR (short for National Public Radio) predominantly relies on sponsorships, member-station dues, philanthropic gifts and federal dollars as its main sources of funding, the Post reported.
Lansing said NPR expected a $30m budget shortfall, despite an earlier plan to address a $20m fall-off in sponsorship revenue for the 2023 fiscal year.
“Unlike the challenges we faced during the worst of the pandemic, we project increasing costs and no sign of a quick revenue rebound,” Lansing wrote. “We must make adjustments to what we control, and that is our spending.
“Guided by our strategic priorities, we must support NPR’s mission and future with the resources we have … as we reduce the number of roles at NPR, some work will need to change or stop entirely. Figuring out what work that is will take some additional time.”
Last November, the company, which has around 1,100 employees, announced $20m in budget cuts, including a hiring freeze, internship suspension and travel restrictions. Those cuts proved insufficient.
“We were doing everything we could against the tide and couldn’t keep clipping our costs as the revenue kept slipping,” Lansing wrote. “We finally got to the point where there was nothing really that we could cut big enough to fill a hole like that.
“With approximately 65% of our budget supporting personnel costs, we will need to eliminate many of the vacant positions that have been frozen. We will also need to reduce filled positions by approximately 10%.
“When we say we are eliminating filled positions, we are talking about our colleagues – people whose skills, spirit and talents help make NPR what it is today. This will be a major loss.”
According to Lansing’s memo, the cuts will not “disproportionately impact people of color or any other historically marginalized group”.
NPR, which is a nonprofit, will reveal final decisions on which jobs will be cut by the week of 20 March.
The announcement follows a series of layoffs across the US media and technology industries. Over the past few months, major companies including CNN, BuzzFeed and Gannett have laid off hundreds of workers. In Silicon Valley, tech giants including Twitter, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta have announced layoffs affecting tens of thousands of employees.
